by When the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2023 shortlist came out last month, a teaser started doing the rounds. Which of the six names was the odd one? The answer: Katarina Johnson-Thompson. Because while she was world champion, no one else on the list – Mary Earps, Stuart Broad, Frankie Dettori, Rory McIlroy and Alfie Hewett – had won the biggest event on their calendars.
Sharp? Without a doubt. Especially since England women reached the World Cup final, Broad retired after a thrilling Ashes, while the others also enjoyed great moments. But it highlighted a wider truth: last year was a great year for British sport, but not a vintage one.
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But with 2024 dawning there is a sense that this could be one for the ages, to be compared to the glorious summer of 1934, when Hedley Verity took 14 wickets in a day against Australia, Henry Cotton end of ten years of American dominance. won the Open and Fred Perry won Wimbledon. Or even 1966, 2003, or 2012, which became a four-digit ephemera for British sporting wins.
For that to happen, England’s men’s football team will surely need to win their first major title in 58 years at this year’s Euros. But you don’t need a George flag tattoo on your chest to believe that they have a chance to be your favorite. The bookies do too.
After all, Harry Kane is England’s top scorer in Europe’s top five leagues. In Jude Bellingham they have the leading scorer in Spain. And they were lucky too: if they top their group they won’t play another group winner until the semi-finals.
There are still familiar questions. Will Gareth Southgate’s handbrake be on or off? Will he trust the attacking talent at his disposal, or his more conservative voice? Either way, England’s odds of 7-2, which equates to a 22% chance of glory, seem out of whack.
Then, just 12 days later, comes the sporting main course of the summer: the Paris Olympics. Here, too, the commandments appear, with analysts at Gracenote predicting that Team GB will win 65 medals – one more than London 2012 – across more than 20 sports.
British sport could be even more successful in 2024. Whatever you make of Tyson Fury, he is favored to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis in 1999. Meanwhile Manchester City and Arsenal among the top scorers to become the first English club. Lifting the European Cup at Wembley from Liverpool in 1978.
But even if the expectations are not the reality in the end, it is worth emphasizing two points. The first is that British elite sport has been around for the last 15 years – albeit with too many comfort scandals, across gymnastics, cycling, swimming and elsewhere. The second? This success on the field does not have to be a trickle down.
Historically, however, we have rarely had it so good. It is just a generation away from the plunging lows of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when Britain won individual gold. Euro 2008, where not a single home nation qualified, even closer. But these are not great outliers. As far back as 1912, the Observer was questioning the state of British sport after the “difficulty” of the Stockholm Games.
In a piece entitled “Britain’s Olympic failures: Are we despicable in sport?”, Sydney Brooks scathingly urged her readers to “look at the record”. “The people of South Africa and New Zealand taught us a few years ago that we had forgotten how to play rugby,” he wrote. “At lawn tennis our former supremacy is waning … and in swimming, skating and rackets I know of no England who is unquestionably first.”
Brooks also bemoaned Britain’s declining success on the polo field and on the billiards table before warning: “As individuals and collective teams, whenever we’re up against foreign rivals there’s a chance we’ll win worst of all.”
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Meanwhile, before the last Olympic Games in Paris in 1924, the Guardian’s “special correspondent” also warned that Britain was being harassed by the US and the rest of Europe. “In the early days their stories only amused us,” wrote the correspondent. “The thought that the day would come when the nations of the continent would surpass us never occurred to us.”
Then came a suggestion, quite radical for 1924: Britain should employ more foreign coaches “to impart the necessary technique” or “send our professionals abroad to learn their trade”. It took the better part of a century to get hold of such an idea, as well as huge sums of public money, but look at the results.
But away from the elite sport, the picture is much less rosy. Leisure centers are still closing. Swimming pools are still being closed. Activity levels across the population are flat or falling. And while so many of us love watching sports, multiple studies have shown little correlation between the success of elites and regular people doing more exercise.
With that in mind, some of the smarter minds in the sports sector have a new wish for 2024: that politicians promise to make Britain the most active nation in Europe. It is a noble ambition. But while some MPs, notably Tracey Crouch and Kim Leadbeater, have highlighted the benefits of a healthier population, particularly for the NHS, it is one that could take money and decades.
It’s no wonder, then, that many of us prefer to focus on one elite sport: ready to take on the glory and sweet treats that may lie ahead.
